It's as if Kylian Mbappé had been trained in Laval, refused to leave Mayenne and still became champion of France. This is a bit of what happened with Mathieu van der Poel (MVDP) and the team now called Alpecin - Deceuninck.
She has just won the first three monuments of the season (The Tour of Flanders and Roubaix for MVDP and Milan - San Remo for Philipsen). And for the second year in a row, she won the first two steps in Roubaix. A triumph for a team still in the second division last year.
10 years ago, the 2023 world champion was well spotted by certain more upscale teams like Patrick Lefevere's Quick-Step. But he only dreamed of shining in cyclo-cross. He therefore signed, in 2014, with a team created five years earlier for this discipline and which was still called BKCP-Powerplus.
🌈 Flying on the cobbles
🌈 In his element #ParisRoubaix pic.twitter.com/yF3m4wTb5R
— Paris-Roubaix (@parisroubaix) April 7, 2024
Five years later, Van der Poel decided to discover the road and his team, in perfect symbiosis, evolved in the same direction. It is now called Corendon-Circus, recruits a few strong professionals and moves up to the Second Division to be invited to major races. And it's bingo. In its first season, MVP won the Amstel Gold Race.
Then comes the time for requests but the Dutchman remains faithful and decides that the grass is not more beautiful elsewhere. He remains in his house which became Alpecin-Fenix (then Alpecin-Deceuninck since July 2022). Within the Belgian structure, he can continue to do cyclo-cross in winter and is associated with the decisions taken by the Roodhooft brothers (Christophe and Philip), the founding bosses of the team. It was he who thus validated the recruitment of Belgian sprinter Jasper Philipsen in 2021. Good pick since, in addition to Milan - San Remo, Philipsen has notably offered Alpecin, six stages of the Tour and also the green jersey in 2023.
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Completely built around MVDP, his team knows that it can see it coming until 2029 since the Dutchman has extended his contract until he is 34 years old. And relishes seeing itself now established as a model of plurality: few training courses, six or seven years ago, offered the possibility of combining cyclo-cross, road and mountain biking. Many have understood the marketing and sporting interest (INEOS, Movistar or EF Education-EasyPost, etc.). But for now, it is still Van der Poel and his team who win the most.